A 19-Year-Old Kanye West Raps, Name Checks Alanis Morissette: Watch

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If you were wondering what Kanye West was like at age 19, a recently surfaced video shows he wasn’t much different at all.

In the clip, taken in August 1996 at Fat Beats record shop on 6th Avenue, Ye was already doing his signature “Haan!” and put his chops on display for a whole room, rapping about being the best and stealing his verses from the future.

“My style is too cold / Always forever like Luther / But it ain’t original because I stole it from the future,” raps the future 21-time (and, likely, counting) GRAMMY winner.

Kanye also calls out Alanis Morissette with the line “that s— is not ironic like Alanis Morissette.” Even as a 19-year-old, Kanye was positioning himself as the best in music.

The owner of the now-defunct Fat Beats and subsequent Sirius XM radio host for “Rap Is Outta Control,” DJ Eclipse, reached out to Complex with the footage.

He also sent over this note:

“The original location of Fat Beats launched on July 14, 1994 which means FB just turned 20 years old! Business was doing so well 2 years in that Joseph Abajian decided to move the store from it’s small 9th St. basement space into a 2nd floor location on 6th Avenue. August 1996 (day?) was the grand opening of the 406 6th Avenue location. It was also the beginnings of our independent movement which had recently started bubbling about a year before.

Yesterday I started converting old Hi8 video tapes to DVD and came across some interesting footage from that day. Now we had a lot of the usual suspects in the place that day such as ILL BILL, Arsonists, Lord Finesse, Adagio, Breeze Brewin, A.L. Skills, Percee P, J-Live, Mr. Live, Chino XL, Al Tariq, Black Attack, Xzibit, Shabaam Sahdeeq, Rawcotiks, Ak Skills, Rob Swift, Roc Raida, DJ Spinna and many, many more. But what took me by surprise was the appearance of this 19-year-old kid who at that time nobody knew. At least in NYC.”